


Before the Dawn

by SweetAnise



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-02-19
Packaged: 2018-08-11 14:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7895443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetAnise/pseuds/SweetAnise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Written February 2012)<br/>He's something other than a Doctor, tonight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> 8/28/16- I haven't been in the Doctor Who fandom in awhile, but I wrote I couple super short fics 4-5 years ago on LiveJournal. They're mildly embarrassing at this point, but I figured I might as well move them over here since it's my main fic reading home these days. (Also, I don't entirely trust LJ not to up and vanish unexpectedly.)
> 
> This one's an itty bitty ficlet set during “Last of the Time Lords”. Quotes in italics come from 3x03 (“Gridlock”), 3x11 (“Utopia”), and 3x06 (“The Lazarus Experiment”)

He’s something other than a Doctor, tonight.

Martha tugs her jacket more tightly around herself, hunkering down behind a conveniently placed boulder and wondering why she’s hiding from her best friend. A year ago ( _two days ago_ ) she would have stood beside him boldly, as the caretaker she’s trained to be or as the jealous hopeful she fears she’s let herself become.

(She knows she’s brave, but it’s going to be awhile before cowering in the shadows stops feeling so natural.)

(Tomorrow. Tomorrow she stops hiding.)

She understands, now, that this is a part of his life that she has no claim on. All the Master means to her is aching legs and an empty stomach, Tish’s involuntary flinch and Tom’s staring eyes, a year of pain and death and unending terror…

She wonders what he could possibly mean to the Doctor to deserve this grief, these flames, this honor.

_And what is he to you? A colleague, or—  
A friend, at first._

She wonders who the Doctor’s forgiveness was really supposed to save.

_I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords...They're all gone now. My family. My friends. Even that sky._

She wonders what he’s seeing burn, tonight— a man, or a world?

_In the end you just get tired. Tired of the struggle. Tired of losing everyone that matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust._

He watches the flames. She watches him.

(Tomorrow. Tomorrow she leaves.)


End file.
